Cummings argues that a negotiated settlement needs a comprehensive strategy, including covert action, increasingly robust sanctions, along with a credible threat of military action.

The author also pointed out the following politically inconvenient fact:

“Through the Revolutionary Guards, “Iran has been responsible for increasing the efficacy of insurgent improvised bombs in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It has helped to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime in Syria and has a track record of attempting to assassinate or imprison its enemies – both at home and abroad.”

True to form, the merry band of Iran defenders whose Guardian-style politics can be pretty much summed up as “the enemy of the US and Israel are by definition deserving of sympathy”, immediately pounced on Cummings’ heterodox pro-Western views, often leveling clear ad hominem attacks on the author which have curiously not been deleted.

(I’ve read the first 202 comments posted thus far, and would gauge those militantly opposed to Cummings’ views in the 90-95% range, many of which are openly hostile to any suggestion that the West should challenge Iran’s aspirations for regional hegemony.)

Cummings is a Mossad agent who should be imprisoned or exiled (12 Recommends, not deleted)

Another accusation that Cummings is a Mossad Agent (10 Recommends)

U.S. and Israel are terrorists and war criminals (41 recommends)

The U.S. and Israel are a blight on the human race (22 recommends)

Iran should be seen as a check against the bullying and hegemony of the U.S and its allies. (23 Recommends)

Cummings is closer to an al-Qaeda terrorist than a civilized human being (25 Recommends)

Israel is an aggressive, jingoistic country which constantly murders innocent civilians (6 Recommends)

Cites conspiracy theory, including the suggestion that Israel lobby is behind assassinations

Perhaps Israeli leaders should be assassinated (8 Recommends)

And, finally, for some comic relief, here’s Berchmans, on the secret war mongering agenda of the “buffoons” at (multiple?) anti-CiF sites!

1) Andrew Cummings’ article supporting the use of a ‘covert campaign’ against Iranian scientists is contrary to Guardian editorial policy and to the views of most Guardian readers. It is published because the Guardian is committed to the free expression of a wide rang of views. Occasionally they even publish articles in support of the Israeli government.

2) Many of the comments under the article agree with Cummings. Others are opposed but are couched in a reasoned and civilised manner. I haven’t read 202 comments but it may be significant that Adam had to trawl through that number to find a few crazies.

The Guardian is definitely not committed to the free expression of a wide range of views, sencar, as well you know.

If that were the case, for every Islamist terror supporting article there would be one in reply which actually tells the truth to the CiF “readership” about the terorists’ murderous intentions. But that rarely happens, does it?

“Occasionally they even publish….” as you say, gives the lie to your first assertion, doesn’t it, because almost invariably anti-Israel views predominate.

As you said, you haven’t read 202 comments, so what gives you the right to pass comment here?

“If that were the case, for every Islamist terror supporting article there would be one in reply”

Sorry SarahLeah your faulty reasoning is showing. Of course the Guardian has a core set of views and its opinion pieces will usually reflect these. However it does regularly publish articles outside this set, such as the one by Cummings. A year or two ago it published the thoughts of President Peres….

However it does regularly publish articles outside this set, such as the one by Cummings. A year or two ago it published the thoughts of President Peres….

Peres one of the builder and supporter of the Oslo process, an unswerving and uncompromising bastion of the two-state solution, the giving up of East-Jerusalem to the Palestinians and the evacuation of Jews from the West-Bank…and according to sencar this is against the Guardian views.

Thank you sencar, you just acknowledged that the Guardian “core set” of views are identical either with the ideology of Hamas or with the religiously fanatic part of the settler movement.
.

Umm…yeah, those Guardian “standards” somehow allowed for a Hamas member to publish at Comment is Free (That is, an essay by a member of an organization which explicitly calls for the murder of Jews is considered consistent with “liberal” thought.) But, of course, sencar, as anyone who has ever come across your comments here surely knows, Jews get you much more riled up than Jew-hatred

Adam, you forgot the obituary for Nizar Rayyan, Islamist sh*tbag, proud murderer of his wife and children whom he refused to allow to leave the apartment during Cast Lead even though he knew he was a target.

This same sh*tbag sent his own son on a suicide murder mission to Israel – note, he didn’t go himself, he preferred to sacrifice his children.
A fine specimen of psycopathy and the Guardian thought that this animal merited an obituary.

“…Rayyan said that he missed the son who had died attacking the settlement (he was 16), but that he planned to push another son to conduct an attack of his own. “It’s our home,” he said. “It’s more dear to me than my kids.”

These are the sort of charmers that the Guardian supports, slimes alongside and bends itself out of shape to excuse.

Funnily enough Adam I see a lot of anger and abuse coming from my ‘riled up’ critics. You will struggle to find anger or abuse in my posts. As for your suggestion that I am anti-semitic; this is the last resort of Zionists who have exhausted all other arguments.

Here comes that innate sense of superiority, and with impeccable manners too. So English and refined Sencar! How else can one judge their intellectual and moral mettle except by the measure of the Jew? I mean Zionist – Israel being full of Jews is purely coincidental to your tunnel-visioned opprobium.

Just as you begin to believe The Guardian’s CiF can’t get any more ridiculous, they prove you wrong and plumb new depths of stupidity and dangerous stupidity at that.
In their eagerness to condemn the USA and Israel they are deliberately overlooking the danger posed to the West by a nuclear armed Iran.
If they were just being stupid you could laugh at their antics, as our Victorian ancestors used to by paying a penny on a Sunday to go to an asylum and laugh at the antics of the lunatics.
But these lunatics are not only stupid they are also dangerous. They are as dangerous as those who in the 1930s were content to overlook rearmament by the Nazi regime instead of stopping it straight away.
No doubt our own resident ‘Guardian groupies’ will doubtless rush to the defence of their kind at CiF probably aided by our own resident ‘International Law expert’, or to more accurately describe him our own resident retard and liar who knows as much about International Law as a newt does about Nuclear physics.

Just as you begin to believe The Guardian’s CiF can’t get any more ridiculous, they prove you wrong and plumb new depths of stupidity and dangerous stupidity at that. In their eagerness to condemn the USA and Israel they are deliberately overlooking the danger posed to the West by a nuclear armed Iran.

Gerald evidently didn’t even bother reading the pro-assassination Cummings article – nor did the 5 people recommending the post.

“Gerald evidently didn’t even bother reading the pro-assassination Cummings article – nor did the 5 people recommending the post.”

Wrong pretzelberg.
Either your mind reading skills are slipping or your crystal ball is getting cloudy, whichever try and fix it before you attempt to read someone else’s mind. You are only making yourself appear a bigger clown than you normally do.
Not hilarious, pathetic!!

No, I voted for Gerald, and for you, sencar, which explains the one star.

Adam, I note you quoted the Einstein of CiF, Berchmans, as if he had anything useful to contribute! I think that he should volunteer to go to Iran and be a stand-in for any other nuclear scientist who is under threat of assassination. It’d probably be the first useful thing he ever did!

I had a good chuckle at the conspiracy theorist post, too. I wonder how many of the contributers wear tinfoil hats?

GreatandGood’s burblings are on a par with the jerk who posted that the Israeli settlers should be shot. That resulted in a police investigation.

Perhaps there should be another one? Surely the Guardian would not want to be done for encouraging the idiotic to incite murder?

Not really. He’s a Tory who hasn’t the first idea about the Islamist threat to the UK and, as do all MPs, whores whatever principles he possesses for the Muslim vote in his constituency in the service of “community cohesion”. He’s about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.

Many of those posts cited are indeed extreme if not dereanged – but tey represent a tiny minority of the comments.

Most of the opposition to Cummings is down to his gung-ho perspective.
We’re talking about the cold-blooded murder of Iranian civilians here – which he refers to in terms such as “bold”, “creative” and “audacious”.

And look how often has this website has called out the Guardian for belittling the murders of Israelis by calling them simply “deaths”? But that’s exactly what Cummings does here.

You also distort the words of MToralez:Cummings is closer to an al-Qaeda terrorist than a civilized human being

Obviously said poster is claiming nothing of the kind!

This website’s credibility suffers yet again from deliberate misquoting.

There were 783 comments on that thread,the usual Berchmans were as cross as cut snakes,they are used to butt-sucking articles on anything that concerns the Muslims.They were shocked to read that there are other views besides their own……………….

They went tropo in their feeble attempts and responses blaming everything on Israel.They got just as good as they gave and a bit more……………….